Abstract: How can some aid be obligatory if there is generally latitude with regard
to duties of beneficence? I offer a new reading of the duty of beneficence proposing
that, counter to prevalent voices in the literature, genuine cases of obligatory aid
are not instances of beneficence. Instead, they are situated in the realm of respect,
the other imperfect duty Kant describes, and which permits significantly less latitude.
This (more narrow) reading of beneficence solves the problem of obligatory aid and,
more generally, shows that cases, such as aid to the global poor, are not best described
as cases of beneficence.

“Violence in Interreligious Thought: The Logic of Abrogation and its Alternatives”

Abstract: I seek to rethink the role of abrogation in theoretical works on relations
between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Abrogation - whereby a religion presents
itself as abrogating previous revelations – has been a key issue in recent discussions
of Jewish-Christian relations, yet scholars have not analyzed it in relation to the
dynamics between Christians, Jews and Muslims. I will examine the role that law has
played in abrogation thought and constructively develop an alternative of interreligious
recognition based on a revised status of religious law.

"The Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution: Catherine Breshkovsky in the United
States, 1904-1920"

Wednesday October 5, 2016, 12:00 p.m., IASH Conference Room (LN 1106)

Presented by: Chelsea Gibson (History)

Summary: My project explains how the Russian revolutionary, Catherine Breshkovsky,
became a national celebrity in the U.S. between her two visits in 1904 and 1919. Breshkovsky’s
dramatic life and grandmotherly image captured the attention of reform-minded women
in 1904 who became deeply invested in Breshkovsky’s attempts to change Russia. Utilizing
their personal letters, public speeches, and press coverage, I show how these American
women used their public influence to craft Breshkovsky’s gendered image as the Revolution’s
“Grandmother,” in the years before 1917, and reveals how her popularity in America
influenced American ideas about the new Bolshevik government, which Breshkovsky ardently
opposed.

Abstract: The recent heightened scholarly and popular interest in intersectionality
highlights the continued need to examine the unique ways in which systems of oppression
manifest themselves in individual lives. This project argues that in her two works
of culinary fiction, Maryse Condé explores the relationship between writing and cooking
in order to address the tensions between abstract theory and concrete experience,
between individual characteristics and various forms of group belonging, and most
especially between historically determined trajectory and (especially artistic) self-determination,
all of which are especially acute for women of color.

"Ethno-Religious Conflict and Political Change at the Turkish-Syrian Border"

Abstract: The Syrian Civil War has drastically changed the lives of both the Syrians
and those in the Turkish-Syrian borderlands since 2011. This project focuses on first,
increasing sectarian and ethnic polarizations in the historically contested border
province, Antakya, in Turkey by looking at how the Syrian refugees and local ethno-religious
minorities grapple with the transformation of the city since the beginning of the
Syrian Conflict. Second, it explores the shift in the political landscape as ethno-religious
identities become more politicized through an examination of the ways in which ‘Syrianness’
and sectarianism are manifested in the public life of Antakya.

"Social Stratification in the Eastern Sephardi Diaspora: The Case of Ottoman Izmir”

Abstract: Drawing on previously unexplored Ladino archival material, this project
reconstructs the poverty that plagued so many of Izmir’s Jews in the late Ottoman
period and recovers the charitable initiatives communal leaders mobilized to remedy
it. Through this Sephardi case-study, the project challenges prevailing interpretations
of modern Jewish history rooted in the European experience that narrate it as a series
of battles between the “universal” and “particular.” The view from the Islamic world,
where Jewish cultural and religious particularism was continuously affirmed, offers
a contrasting perspective, pointing instead to the centrality of socioeconomic class
as a venue of modern change.

Encountering el Extranjero: The Poetry of the Humanismo Solidario Movement Challenging
the Ethics of Cultural Exchange in a Globalized World.

Summary: This project focuses on the poetry of the Humanismo Solidario movement in
Spain which criticizes the current ethical paradigms of globalization. Through translating
and analysing the central poems, the aim is to introduce new perspectives concerning
the treatment of the foreign and the asymmetrical power relationships present between
dominant western ideology and subordinate cultures. This project addresses two objectives:
firstly, to examine their claim that poetry plays a critical role in addressing issues
of social injustice resulting from globalization and secondly, how the lack of wider
recognition the movement has thus far received illustrates the very imbalances the
works address.

Abstract: This talk examines the cataclysm of Latin American revolution in the context
of Atlantic narratives of progress. I will compare writing by British Romantic poet
Anna Barbauld and Venezuelan revolutionary Simón Bolívar to show how on both sides
of the ocean, onlookers understood Latin American independence as a challenge to the
formal structures of the traditional imperial progress narrative.

“Passions and the Peaceable Kingdom: Religious and Civic Emotions in Early Modern
Augsburg”

"In the sixteenth century in the German city of Augsburg, Protestants and Catholics
lived side-by-side in peace, at a moment in European history that witnessed large-scale
and widespread religious violence elsewhere. As part of a larger study into the social
practices enabling this peace, I propose to use an IASH faculty fellowship to explore
how emotions figured into Augsburg’s surprising success. Specifically, I shall examine
the ways in which the emotions of religious practices were shaped by the various Protestant
and Catholic theologies and were adapted to the particular pastoral context of multi-denominational
Augsburg."